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Posted by
will
on 2010-11-24

PUBLIC:

Follow up to the 10/23 post - we closed with Starvest. The due diligence was intense. Each partner was involved in speaking to the market, speaking to customers and speaking to previous investors. Our round was 7 mill and the terms were excellent for a B -- matching what was in place for the A with only minor adjustments.

Jeanne Sullivan is a very interesting and smart person. She comes across as not having a deep knowledge in what we were doing, however AFTER the close, i spoke to her and she knew exactly what we were doing (which is somewhat complicated and not very easy to understand). Larry was the exact same way.

Here is the reality of my experience with them: they ask questions and conduct DD so they can understand how the team (mainly the leadership) responds and reacts. If you focus on how they are asking what they are asking instead of the actual questions you will see they want to understand how the ceo/leadership thinks. How they process information, etc. This is, after all, a protracted interview on the ability to lead.

In spite of the info here on the funded about them, we had great success. From initial pitch to close was less than 90 days.

To be clear, their attorneys asked for EVERYTHING. SV asked for EVERYTHING. They did background checks and looked for anything in someone's past that may show up as being an issue. Our team was very upfront about any issues they may find and it went very smoothly. I found this to be over the top and not necessary, until i spoke to a friend who sold his company years ago and told me the horror story about his valuation being impacted by the lack of dd material being in order. While painful, we now have every single document on the company in one place and in perfect order.

So - my experience was not the same as the previous posters. Laura, Deborah, Sylvia, Larry and Jeanne are not the easiest people to work with through this process unless you are very transparant and lose the ego answering questions and working through issues. They are very bright and drill into what makes the leadership tick and how they make decisions. This sounds general, but they focus intently on the team.

All in all, we are quite pleased that we are closed and have them involved. They are already trying to help grow the business.

I will leave my contact info in the private if you want an intro to them. They are not early stage, however are excellent B and beyond players. We could not be more pleased.

p.s. = SV did NOT ask for this post. They are aware of this site and think it is unfortunate how they are portrayed, however they pointed out to me == what was on here prior to me finding it. They acted with a lot of integrity on the issues posted here. Again -- one man's experience. Good luck all.